Advisory Council for Youth Affairs (Nuora), nowadays called the State Youth Council, started to produce Youth Surveys in 1994. This survey series charts attitudes and expectations of Finnish young people aged 15 - 29. Each survey contains both current questions and recurring questions which are repeated over time, enabling the study of long-term attitude changes. The main themes include attitudes to education, working life, social security, spending, drug use, and young people's willingness to participate in order to influence decision-making.
The main themes of the Finnish Youth Survey Autumn 1998 were social participation, cultural services, and political focal points. Young people's future plans, world view, and notions of various social institutions were queried.
First, the respondents were asked about public political influence. Trust in various institutions (e.g. political parties, church, police, banks, and the EU) was charted, and the respondents indicated what they would be willing to do in order to promote the issues they considered important (e.g. participate in a public demonstration, use violence against political decision-makers, sign a petition, or join a political party).
Next questions canvassed the use of cultural services. The respondents indicated the importance of various services, including opera performances and festivals, theatre performances, and rock concerts.
Young people's world view was also under observation. They were presented with a set of attitudinal statements on the acceptability of various things, such as attacking fur farms, participating in demonstrations against foreigners, and claiming unemployment benefits on false grounds. The importance of achieving various things (e.g. own family and children, permanent job, higher than average wage) by the age of 35 was also queried.
Further questions surveyed the political attitudes of young people. The importance of decisions made in various institutions (such as the local council, Parliament, the EU, and the school system) was examined. The respondents were also presented with a set of attitudinal statements on Finnish society, covering topics such as racism, the EU membership, and foreign workers. In addition, they were asked to name the two most important things the next Government should focus on (for example national defence, employment, or environmental protection). Finally, the respondents were asked how much various things (e.g. youth work, museums, or reducing taxes) should be focused on, if there were more latitude in the Finnish economy.
Background variables included the respondent's age, gender, education, province of residence, and economic activity.
Finnish Youth Survey Autumn 1998 was conducted in connection with the Labour Force Survey of Statistics Finland. The sample of the Labour Force Survey is drawn twice a year as a stratified random sample from the Statistics Finland population database, which is based on the central population register. The survey is a panel survey in which one person is interviewed five times. The interviews are conducted every three months apart from the fourth interview, which is conducted six months after the third interview. The first and last interviews are 15 months apart. The sample in each month consists approximately of 12,000 persons, which is, on average, every 300th person from the population. The sample consists of five rotation groups which have joined the survey in different months. The sample in the Finnish Youth Survey Autumn 1998 consisted of 1,459 Finnish-speaking young people from several rotation groups. The sample was formed by including all young people aged between 15-29. After removing the overcoverage, the net sample size was brought down to 1,456 persons. Altogether 1,258 interviews were received. The number of non-respondents was 198 persons (i.e. 13.6%). The duration of each interview was approximately 12 minutes.